Thursday, 1 December 2011

Priceless experiences in Egypt

Of the 60 + days I spent in Egypt, each day carries with them a unique collection of memories and stories that have all too often been left untold. With each passing day, another memory of life in Egypt vanishes and another story is permanently lost, but some memories are meant to be stored in my mind.

Lot of things have happened, some are good, but some are just not worth to keep. Knowing egyptians is interesting for me but most I encountered are annoying and they just deserve your cursing words. : 0)

But I'm glad to meet new friends here : ) It helps me to learn new things. It somehow makes me feel better about myself :3

So, here's some of the things I experience since I came here :

- Traffic here is a total nightmare! The drivers are nuts. They would simply increase their speed whenever they see pedestrians (especially malaysians) by the road and some would even intentionally drive towards you and turn the car away. pissed off isn't it? They behave really uncivilized here, even when driving. and there's a reason why there's no ease in the flow of traffic here. I experienced this before, we almost got hit and what we did was just cursing lol.

- The Mansourian taxi is at once a blessing to tourists, but can also be the cause of much frustration. Taxis in Mansoura do not use meters, or any fixed system at all. All the taxis have meters, but will never use them. Every once in a while I have heard stories of taxi drivers turning on the meter when they have foreigners in the car, and then trying to charge them the price on the meter, which is much more than the usual. So if your driver tries to turn on the meter, or charge you the fare on the meter, immediately tell him no, and if he refuses, leave. I still remember when the driver cheated on us, he fixed a certain amount of LE but charged us more when we got out of the car. Don't let the driver take advantage of you, seriously you cant act good here, you have to be nasty at times and show that you are not gullible. There were a few times when they tried to rip us off just because we are foreigners, but all you need to do is just walk away and tell him the price is fair. In my case, I usually end up with arguments.

- People here, mostly narrow-minded ones always call Malaysians 'huga huga or abuya' it means a description of 'orang asli'. It's due to our Malaysia tourism advertise pictures and videos of Gunung Kinabalu, Gua, so they assume we people live in the cave etc. Tell me how small-minded can they be? They just need to be educated in Malaysia, seriously. Plus, most of them don't even understand English, it's kinda hard to communicate and the best part is whenever you say something, bad word like 'stupid', they will just laugh cause they don't know what the hell that word is. lol.

- Some of them are quite rude and so annoying. I am appalled at the way men behave in this culture. They are just bloody rude. Ah, get me away from this people please. And some of them are just sex maniacs. So far I have never been groped or what and that makes me really thankful enough but one of the worst parts of this is that dealing with the stupid and rude people are affecting my view of the Egyptian culture and I feel so bad about feeling that way. So, it’s a cycle. I get angry, and then I’m angry for being angry. I tell myself I need to think of it from their perspective, I need to be more patient, I need to be x,y,z. But, I’m getting to the point where I don’t want to make excuses anymore. I don’t want to feel like I need to “be” a certain something or accept being treated with such disrespect.

-Pollution, this, unfortunately, is a major down-side of living in Egypt.The air pollution is ridiculous.Almost everyone smokes including some little kids and women (biggest turn-off ever).Supposedly, breathing the air in Mansoura City is equivalent to smoking twenty cigarettes a day.I managed to have some allergies when I first arrived though I have never had allergies for a quite long time!Furthermore, there were even a couple instances where I would get random nose bleeds in the beginning.

- Noise pollution is something else too. Everyone honks their car like there's no tomorrow. I have heard of people having to replace their car-horn every three months (i didnt know this was possible) but i gotta put up with it for the 6 friggin years, man!

- Different language we speak make it even harder to ask for help. Sometimes i find it funny when we just respond 'aiwa' whenever the cab driver tries to initiate a conversation with us. God knows what he's thinking.

I have had an amazing time in Egypt thus-far, alhamdulillah. And everywhere you go you would meet all this kind of people, not only in Egypt, everywhere. But, don't get paranoid easily : ) I really have a countless life-experience in egypt but i barely remember all of them. Hehe. Will post another, when I could flashback them : )